


ashes on the ground

by sapphicish



Series: PRIDEfall [1]
Category: Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, Season/Series 01, because that's what she does baby!, look they're lesbians i don't make the rules, this is a story about how leslie and tina fucked and then leslie ruined everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 05:55:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17197796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicish/pseuds/sapphicish
Summary: This doesn't mean I trust you,Tina had said.I know,Leslie had said, and ran her mouth along the column of her throat until some small part of Tina did trust her.





	ashes on the ground

**Author's Note:**

> wives of PRIDE leave your husbands and get together with eachother instead challenge

Tina sleeps with Leslie sometime in the space between learning about Robert and Janet's affair and learning that Leslie had a part in Amy's death. Somewhere in the middle there, before everything goes to hell, before she dreams of wrapping her hands around Leslie's throat and squeezing, squeezing, squeezing until the life drains out of her eyes and she knows just how Tina feels every waking moment of every day, empty and dead and _hopeless._

Tina sleeps with Leslie and she likes it. It's good. Better than it should be. Better than she expects it to be, and better than she wants it to be. Leslie is soft and gentle in all the ways she doesn't think she is or has ever been with anyone but maybe Jonah, but Jonah is the last thing on her mind when they're together, Leslie's hands sliding across her bare skin and teaching her everything she's never known about a slower, more delicate pleasure.

She's never slept with a woman before, and Leslie touches her like she's slept with plenty, and Tina thinks about that too.

She thinks about everything.

And it's not like she's never thought about _it_ before, too, sleeping with Leslie sooner, long ago, or at the very least wondering what she's like in bed, but she'd never had any intention of finding out until it happened. Her curiosity was just that, curiosity, and only that, and sometimes curiosity couldn't or shouldn't be sated, and Tina understood that always, so when she found her gaze lingering on Leslie's face when she turned a certain way and sunlight shone through her hair and gave it a new kind of radiance, or when—once or twice—she found herself trying to count the woman's freckles, well. That was just curiosity, and curiosity wasn't anything to worry about, or care about, or think about at any time but when she was deep into a couple glasses of wine.

Tina had been just fine with that, up to the point where Leslie was leaning close to her when the other parents left the room, laying a sympathetic hand on her knee, talking about Robert like she didn't know what she was doing to Tina, and it had been a little confusing and a little quick in the moment and she'd thought that if she wouldn't kiss Leslie first (she wouldn't) and if Leslie didn't kiss her first then they'd be sitting here, staring awkwardly at one another, not kissing. Before she could get up and leave without another word, Leslie's lips had pressed against her own, warm and soft like nothing she'd ever felt before. She tasted like strawberries, which was surprising and somehow fitting all at once. Tina wasn't an idiot; she never had been, so of course she thought of the possibility that it was all some sort of twisted manipulation Leslie thought might work beyond anything else, as though Tina could ever be manipulated through something as petty as sex.

But then it happened again, and again, and a fourth time, a fifth. And then Tina thought, _well._ This was starting to become a trend.

A concerning trend, maybe, but Leslie always breathed her name so sweetly in her ear, and when her fingers were inside of Tina making her breath hitch as her hands clenched tight in the sheets and stars were flashing behind her eyes the way they used to with Robert what seemed like so long ago now, Tina was helpless to do anything but say Leslie's name back, a mantra spilling from her tongue, and grow deaf and blind to everything else.

( _Please,_ she sometimes said, but she'd never admit it under interrogation and Leslie never brought it up. _Please._ )

Leslie never made her beg, never made her wait; she gave her everything and more. It filled such a quiet, low ache inside of herself that it occurred to her that this was it: this was the highly-sought after thing everyone wanted, what Robert had wanted and gotten, somehow, from Janet.

And now, here, surrounded by the others in a way that makes Tina feel like she's choking because she knows they can all see what she feels, Leslie looks at her, looks at her tears and her shock and she says – _it just happened._ Amy's death just happened. Her daughter's death just happened, the way how they slept together just happened, the way how Jonah just happened, the way how Tina's heart feels like it's splitting apart and falling to pieces and sinking down, down, to the deep dark pit of her stomach is just happening.

Tina threatens her, because she is good at that. Tina recovers, because she is good at that. Tina stops crying, because she is so, so good at that, at piecing back together the facade that falls in place neatly around her even as Leslie's gaze lingers on her face, soft and faintly teary-eyed like she's the one that should look that way instead of it being the other way around, instead of Tina being the one shattered and lost.

Tina focuses on the idea of Jonah's demise, because she's good at that too. And then, when they go home, she tells Robert that she's going to take a shower. She closes the door and she locks it and because the silence beyond that door and in the bathroom and stretching all around her is unbearable, she undresses and she lets her hair down and she turns the faucet and she steps in under the hot spray of water.

She thinks about Leslie's hands on her, that sweet, cool voice in her ear, the words they shared in the evenings and mornings before and after. _This doesn't mean I trust you,_ Tina had said. _I know,_ Leslie had said, and ran her mouth along the column of her throat until some small part of Tina did trust her, or she'd never let it happen in the first place, she'd never let Leslie in her _bed,_ she'd never let her anywhere near her ever again.

But Leslie was good at that, getting what she wanted out of people, pulling and pulling until all the little strings inside of them unraveled between her fingers, open and splayed like frayed rope. She'd built PRIDE on it, built everything on it her whole life. Tina knew this, understood it like one of many simple facts of life even with Leslie's mouth between her legs, doing things to her she'd not imagined possible up until then.

And still.

Still, she had never imagined it would go so far, so deep, so cruel and jagged like a dagger's edge burrowing its way into her spine.

This was half her fault. She had let herself be vulnerable, open, even a little trusting, enough to think that even despite all of Leslie's many flaws and her unwavering, stupid faith in the greater cause that she would never kill a child.

Correction: that she would never kill _Tina's_ child.

Nameless, faceless, forgotten sacrifices were one thing. Amy was different. Amy was hers, all hers, beautiful and bright and perfect and now, because of PRIDE, because of Jonah, because of _Leslie_ –

The shower walls spin around her, blurring. Tina drops her head against the wet glass, sucking in one breath and then another. Her ribs feel tight, like they're closing in against eachother, like everything inside of her is drawing up into one tight, hard coil.

(“Your hair,” Leslie says, the third time, the first time they speak during it in more than silent commands and requests through quiet gestures and the wordless push-and-pull of their bodies, the first time Tina dares to look at her face for longer than two seconds, the first time she realizes that this is happening and has happened several times and is becoming a habit that she doesn't care to break.

“What about it?” Tina says, half defensive and half wary, pulling dark strands free from Leslie's wandering fingers.

Leslie smiles, leans in to kiss her. She turns her head to avoid it, like she always does, and so those lips brush Tina's cheek instead, but the smile remains.

“It's lovely,” Leslie says.

Tina can't help it, not then: she smiles back.)

Tina sobs roughly, and it turns into a cough, and another, and outside she hears the distant rap of Robert's knuckles on the door. “Are you all right?” he calls, all soft wary concern.

She doesn't respond—can't, really, even when she tries to reassure him that yes, yes, yes, she's fine. She's so perfectly fine. She's never been better than here, now, alone with the realization that she's been sleeping with the enemy, letting hands that belong to a woman who had a part in her daughter's death run through her hair and down her body and rest between her thighs. 

Tina can't. So, instead, she kneels on the hard tile and watches her vomit run down the drain and wonders if this is what she's been reduced to.

She knows the answer.

When the water finally runs cold, she steps out and checks her phone, a habit formed over the years – her phone is never far from her, she's never far from her phone. Nevermind how her fingers tremble on the screen or how her vision blurs; she isn't going to cry again. She knows the signs, and these aren't them. Maybe she'll go outside, far away from Robert, and scream around her fists. She might do that. But she won't cry. Not again.

Tina has one missed call from Leslie and one text. Something inside of her burns at the sight of her name in her contact list. Small, unassuming. _Leslie._ Sometimes, before, she would smile when she saw it if she was in a particularly good mood, but she knows one thing: it never made her feel like this before, like she's full of clawing, frothing rage and bitter despair.

Tina takes a deep breath over the sink, focuses on that; one deep breath in, one deep breath out, again and again until she feels less nauseous. Then she reads the text.

_I'm sorry._

Tina clenches her jaw so hard that she swears her teeth are about to crack. She writes something back, something long and ranting and angry and horrible, disgusting when she reads it back to herself, knowing that Leslie must be sitting on the edge of her bed watching that bubble that indicates she's typing, knowing that Leslie knows she's struggling for words.

She erases it all, because it has too many spelling mistakes but also because it has too much emotion.

Tina texts _you will be,_ and sends it before she can think better of it, and then sits staring at the dimming screen until the phone turns off.

Leslie doesn't reply. Tina doesn't expect it, doesn't want it, would rather never hear from her again and never see her face ever again but that isn't the way things are going to work.

The children come first. The children have to come first, and everything else can be forgotten, pushed aside. For now.

Tina closes her eyes, insides feeling gnarled and heavy with loss. Something wet drips down her cheek.

It's for Amy. Not for Leslie Dean. Not even _because_ of Leslie Dean.

She doesn't know if that's true, and the thought doesn't even make her feel any better, but nothing ever does.

“Tina,” Robert says outside the door, his voice full of quiet understanding. It makes her skin crawl. “Are you okay? You've been in there for...a while.”

Nearly two hours, she realizes when she checks her phone. She stares at her reddened eyes and her damp cheeks in the mirror, breathing deep.

“Don't worry, Robert,” she says, turns the pain into a seething sarcasm against him, “I didn't drown. I'll be out in a minute.”

Silence, and then— “You didn't answer my question.”

“Robert?”

“Yes?”

“Go to bed.”

Tina listens to the footsteps that trail quietly, obediently away from the door. She wonders what she'd do if he decided to stay, wonders what he'd say, wonders if she would collapse in his arms the moment she took the first step out of the bathroom.

Tina looks again into the mirror, the empty feeling in her chest swelling to an overwhelming degree, and knows that none of it would matter anyway.

She has work to do.

They all do.


End file.
